Region

DUBAI — The United Arab Emirates has thrown its support behind neighbouring Saudi Arabia’s decision to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, increasing Gulf Arab pressure on the Islamist group.

Saudi Arabia listed the 86-year-old Brotherhood along with several other groups, including Al Qaeda affiliates, as terrorist organisations on Friday. Those who join or support the groups could face five to 30 years in prison under the new Saudi policy.

The Gulf moves against the Brotherhood follow an Egyptian decision to label it a terrorist organisation in December. The move by the military-backed interim government in Cairo comes amid a crackdown on the group following its July ouster of the country’s first elected president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi.

Cairo based its accusation mainly on a series of deadly bomb attacks that it says the Brotherhood orchestrated. The Brotherhood denies the accusations. Egyptian authorities have produced little evidence showing a direct Brotherhood link that is open to public scrutiny, and most of the attacks have been claimed by a Sinai-based militant group.

The Western-allied UAE, a seven-state federation that includes the cosmopolitan business hub of Dubai, said it will cooperate with Saudi Arabia to tackle “those terrorist groups through liquidating all forms of material and moral support”.

“The significant step taken by [Saudi Arabia] in this critical moment requires concerted efforts and joint collective work to address the security and stability challenges that threaten the destiny of the Arab and Muslim nation,” the UAE said in a statement carried by official news agency WAM late Saturday.

The Saudi terrorist designation also blacklisted Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen and its former affiliate in Iraq, the Syrian Al Nusra Front, Hizbollah within the kingdom and Yemen’s Shiite Houthis.

The Brotherhood condemned the Saudi move against it Friday as a “complete departure from the past relationship” with the kingdom and insisted that it does not interfere in matters of other nations.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the two largest Arab economies, have increasingly clamped down on the Brotherhood in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings.

They along with the tiny kingdom of Bahrain last week withdrew their ambassadors from nearby Qatar to protest what they saw as its failure to uphold a deal to stop interfering in other nations’ politics and supporting organisations that threaten the Gulf’s stability. Analysts say the move in large part reflects Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood and its supporters.

The Emirates has jailed dozens of people allegedly linked to Brotherhood-affiliated groups on state security charges over the past year. It accuses Islamist groups of trying to topple its Western-backed ruling system.

The nation’s top court last week sentenced a Qatari doctor to seven years and two Emiratis to five years in prison for collaborating with an illegal Islamist group. The same court in January convicted 30 men, most of them Egyptian, of setting up an illegal Brotherhood branch in the UAE. They received prison terms ranging from three months to five years.

Another 69 people were last year sentenced to up to 15 years behind bars after being convicted of links to Al Islah, an Islamist group suspected of ideological ties to the Brotherhood.

TUNIS — A 10-metre whale died on Sunday after becoming tangled in a Tunisian fisherman’s nets off the coast of Sidi Bou Said town north of the capital Tunis.

“At first, I thought it was a car bumper. Then I saw the whale’s tail,” the 24-year-old Bilel Jerbi told AFP.

He said the whale, whose species has yet to be identified, was already dying when he found it in his nets, although it was unclear what had killed it.

Jerbi then towed the carcass to port in Sidi Bou Said.

The marine mammal was around 10 metres in length and weighed “seven or eight tonnes”, according to an official from the Tunisian coastguard.

“We have seen three- or four-metre-long whales before. But it’s the first time for one of this size or weight,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Sunday afternoon, fishermen and members of the coastguard, surrounded by onlookers, were still trying to drag the whale from the water, Jerbi said.

The fisherman said he had suffered financially because of the loss of the nets torn by the oversized catch, but said he was hoping to sell the whale for meat.

But the coastguard official said it would be down to the “national institute for sciences to examine it and to see what to do with it”.

The institute was not immediately available for comment.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare said whales “can find ropes and nets wrapped around their fins and flukes... The whales might drown and die quickly, or live for weeks or months with the deadly gear tightening around them, leading to eventual infection, illness and often death”.

CAIRO — Egypt’s powerful military chief launched a $40 billion housing initiative Sunday to build a million homes in cooperation with a major Emirati construction firm, the first campaign-style move by Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi, who is widely expected to run for president.

Sisi hasn’t made an official announcement yet, but has strongly indicated he would run. The elections expected in April are the first since the military ousted elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July following mass protests against him.

The housing initiative was announced Sunday on the official Facebook page of Egypt’s military spokesman. It said the million homes are dedicated to “Egypt’s youth” and are a first step to solve the country’s housing problem.

In a signing ceremony later aired on Egyptian television, the head of the military’s corps of engineers, Maj. Gen. Taher Abdullah Taha, said the initiative is one of the most important projects to solve the housing problems in Egypt and underlines the close cooperation and friendship between Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

“It is a major project that strengthens brotherly relations and friendship” between the two countries, Taha told a gathering of military generals, the chairman of Arabtec, the Emirati firm, and housing experts. “This new cooperation is an addition to a flood of giving from the brotherly United Arab Emirates aimed at helping alleviate the suffering of the Egyptian people.”

Senior generals close to Sisi and government officials have told The Associated Press he has secured a large aid package from wealthy Gulf Arab nations and allies — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — that would help keep the nation’s troubled economy afloat. The focus on alleviating economic woes and securing funds would help Sisi maintain his popularity while pushing on with painful economic reform, like lifting or restructuring the massive fuel and bread subsidies that account for nearly half of all government spending.

So far, those Gulf countries have poured $12 billion into Egypt in emergency packages since Morsi’s ouster.

At Sunday’s ceremony, a military official told the gathering the UAE promised Egypt three months’ worth of oil products, a move clearly aimed at easing the country’s energy crunch.

Hasan Abdulla Ismaik, Arabtec’s chairman, said Sisi has designated for free 13 different locations for the new project, targeting middle-income Egyptians. Arabtec in a statement said the project is valued at $40 billion and will be funded in the most part by a number of Egyptian and foreign banks. They plan for it to be developed over five years.

“We believe the Egyptian economy is poised for a significant rebound, particularly with the current government policies geared towards encouraging investment in the property development sector,” Ismaik said in a statement.

Pictures posted on the military spokesman’s Facebook page showed Sisi meeting with Ismaik, reviewing the project portfolio.

Since Egypt’s 2011 revolt, the powerful armed forces increasingly have taken on major infrastructure projects — an expansion of a role they have long played and which has helped them gain popularity.

Egypt has been roiled by ongoing protests largely from Morsi supporters. On Sunday, as students returned to schools and universities after their midyear break, limited protests took place outside a number of schools in Cairo. There were no clashes, but private broadcaster ONTV said students lobbed firebombs at its live feed car outside Cairo University and showed footage of the torched vehicle. The station said the blaze wounded two employees.

The protests have waned in the past months amid an intense crackdown from authorities that left thousands detained or facing trials. The midyear break had been extended by two weeks, apparently out of concern from authorities that students would boost the protest movement ahead of the election season.

TEHRAN — EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Sunday a final accord on Iran’s nuclear programme cannot be guaranteed, during a landmark visit that underscores a thaw in Tehran’s ties with the West.

Ashton is in Tehran on an official visit that comes after Iran signed a preliminary deal in November with world powers under which it agreed to curb its disputed nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

The breakthrough was made possible after last year’s election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, viewed as a relative moderate who has the ear of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The so-called P5+1 — UN Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany — hopes to reach final agreement by July 20, when the initial pact is due to expire.

“This interim agreement is really important but not as important as a comprehensive agreement [which is]... difficult, challenging, and there is no guarantee that we will succeed,” Ashton told a joint news conference in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The trip is the first to Iran by a European Union foreign affairs chief since 2008, thanks to the November deal that has raised hopes for diplomacy to resolve the nuclear issue.

The next high-level talks are scheduled in Vienna on March 17 and will be followed by more rounds until July.

On a visit which winds up on Monday and has drawn criticism from Israel, Ashton, who leads the P5+1’s engagement with Iran, also met with Rouhani as well as other senior officials.

Zarif, for his part, said Iran held up its end of the bargain and it was up to the other side to finalise the accord.

“Iran is determined to reach an agreement. We have shown good faith and political will. We have done our part,” Zarif said.

Zarif said such an agreement would need to “respect the rights of Iranian people and serve national interest without ambiguities”.

The minister expressed confidence a deal was within reach by July.

Ashton’s visit has been billed by one European diplomat in Tehran as a “goodwill gesture from the EU”, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticised it on Sunday.

“I’d like to ask her if she asked her Iranian hosts about the weapon delivery to the terror groups, and if she didn’t ask, why not?” he said in reference to a ship the Israeli military intercepted allegedly transporting arms from Iran to Gaza.

Israel’s Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said: “I would expect Catherine Ashton to cancel or at least postpone her visit to Tehran... At this time to go and speak with the Iranians as if nothing happened, is something that should be avoided.”

 Human rights on agenda 

In his talks with Ashton, Rouhani, quoted by Iran’s ISNA news agency, called for closer ties with the EU, notably in the energy and trade sectors.

The two parties could also “cooperate in the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking, Afghanistan, Iraq or also Syria”, he said.

The issue of human rights was another item on Ashton’s agenda, despite the potential to upset Iranian hardliners, sources said.

Ashton said she held talks with Zarif “about the potential of human rights dialogue in the future” and said she was “proud” to have met on Saturday night with local women activists on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

An eight-member European Parliament group visited Iran in December and met rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and filmmaker Jafar Panahi, sparking criticism from conservatives.

Sotoudeh was released from jail along with nearly a dozen other political prisoners last September, part of Rouhani’s charm offensive.

Also on Ashton’s agenda was the conflict in Iran’s ally Syria, which Zarif described as “dangerous”.

The United States, other Western powers and Israel have long suspected Iran of using its civil nuclear energy programme as a cover for developing atomic weapons, a charge denied by Tehran.

However, there are many outstanding sensitive issues including the scope of Iran’s enrichment programme, demands that its bunkered Fordo uranium enrichment site be closed along with the Arak heavy-water reactor.

BEIRUT –– About a dozen nuns held in Syria for more than three months have been released and are on their way to Damascus via Lebanon, a Lebanese security source said on Sunday.

The source said the nuns had been transferred to the Lebanese town of Arsal earlier in the week and were on their way to Syria on Sunday.

The nuns went missing in December after Islamist fighters took the ancient quarter of the Christian town of Maaloula north of Damascus.

GAZA CITY — On the roof of Gaza City’s children’s hospital, a pristine row of solar panels gleams in the sunlight, an out-of-place symbol of modern, clean energy in the impoverished Strip.

As the coastal Palestinian territory lives through the worst fuel shortage in its history, many of Gaza’s 1.6 million inhabitants are beginning to see solar power not just as a viable alternative, but perhaps as the only solution to the energy crisis.

“We were forced to consider relying on solar power alone after the energy crisis that events in Egypt brought about,” said hospital director Nabil Al Burqani, referring to the closure of cross-border tunnels which halted the fuel supply into Gaza.

“We need solar energy in order to keep up care for babies in the maternity ward,” he told AFP.

“If there’s just a minute-long cut to the electricity that runs the baby incubators, a child could die.”

Gazans have learned to live with daily power outages of up to 12 hours that have affected private homes, schools, hospitals, businesses and water and sanitation plants.

The ruling Hamas movement has blamed the crisis on Egypt’s destruction of cross-border tunnels which had been used for importing fuel, a decision implemented after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

The tunnels had played a key role in Gaza’s economy since 2006, when Israel imposed a blockade after the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid. The restrictions were tightened the following year when Hamas seized power.

Although the Israeli restrictions have since been eased, the tunnels continued to be the main conduit for fuel.

By harnessing the energy of the intense sunlight that beats down on the coastal enclave most of the year, Gazans are optimistic they can overcome the crisis in the long term.

And initial setup costs — which include buying and installing panels and converters, and the batteries needed to run them — are potentially outweighed by the benefits.

The project at the children’s hospital, which was partly funded by British relief charity Sawaed, was set up in January 2013 at a cost of $100,000 (74,000 euros) and is now providing 20 kilowatts of electricity per day.

Elsewhere, a Kuwaiti donation of $6 million is paying for the construction of five new schools, all of which will be equipped with solar panels, the education ministry said.

But the solar drive is not limited only to large-scale foreign-funded projects.

Individual families, if they can afford the initial outlay, are also switching to solar, which promises to be a much safer alternative than generators.

After the fuel crisis kicked in, mobile back-up generators quickly became commonplace, but were often unsafe, causing a string of deaths through explosions, fires and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Shadi Jawwad bought solar panels for his home in the central Gaza Strip after getting a bank loan.

“There’s no electricity or fuel to run the generators or the power station in Gaza, but we can use the sun,” the 44-year-old government worker said.

“My own solar set-up cost 5,000 shekels [$1,400], and with it I can get enough electricity to light my home and keep the television on for several hours, even during the regular power cuts to the main supply,” Jawwad told AFP.

“This is a safe way of keeping my home running... And I only make one down payment to set up the solar power system, rather than having to buy more petrol every day for my generator at fluctuating and often extortionate prices.”

Figures released by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA show that in November, Gaza received less than 20,000 litres of fuel per week, down from nearly a million litres a day when the tunnels were operating.

Gaza’s sole power station ground to a halt on November 1 after diesel stocks ran out. It only went back online 50 days later after a delivery of Israeli fuel which was paid for by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

But the need to seek alternatives to carbon-based fuels appears to be sinking in.

On its website, Gaza’s energy authority says it is looking to introduce “a strategy to encourage solar energy use”, in the hope that by 2020, solar power will account for 20 per cent of the territory’s energy consumption.

For now, it is relying on a stock of solar equipment which was brought through the tunnels before Egypt shut them.

CAIRO — Interim Egyptian president Adli Mansour promulgated Saturday a law setting the stage for an election later this year to replace ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The election is seen as a major step in a roadmap outlined by the interim authorities after the military deposed Morsi in July.

Army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who has emerged as Egypt’s most popular political figure, has not yet announced his candidacy but aides say he has decided to stand.

Officials close to Sisi told AFP that he would step down as defence minister after the law was promulgated.

The law sets out the basic qualifications for candidacy and includes a measure criticised in some quarters that make all decisions by the electoral committee before and after the vote final and not subject to appeal.

With the adoption of the law, the electoral committee can now set a date for the election scheduled for this spring, presidential adviser for constitutional matters Ali Awad told a press conference.

It stipulates that presidential candidates be university graduates at least 40 years of age who have completed their military service and have Egyptian parents.

It bans any candidates who have themselves acquired a foreign nationality, or whose parents or spouse have.

It also stipulates that candidates need to secure the signatures of 25,000 voters from 15 provinces to qualify.

And it sets a 20 million Egyptian pounds ($2.8 million, 2 million euros) ceiling for campaign spending ahead of the first round and five million pounds in case of a run-off.

In January, voters approved by 98.1 per cent a new constitution that grants the military extensive powers but lacks much of the Islamist-inspired wording of the 2012 charter adopted under Morsi.

Under the charter, Egypt is to start procedures for parliamentary elections within six months of its adoption.

The decision to ban appeals was taken, in part, to speed up the electoral process given “the nature of the transitional period the country is going through and the security and economic crisis”, Awad added.

More than seven months after Morsi’s overthrow, Egypt remains battered by protests and militant attacks that have damaged its vital tourism industry and scared off investors.

Many Egyptians, weary of the three years of turmoil since the 2011 toppling of strongman Hosni Mubarak, view Sisi as a strong hand who can restore stability.

But the ban on appealing electoral committee decisions has already drawn criticism.

The leftist Popular Current, whose leader Hamdeen Sabahi has already announced his candidacy, was one of the critics.

“The ban gives negative signals regarding the transparency of the election,” the party’s spokesman Emad Hamdy said.

He added that “the president issued the decree without submitting it to a public debate... and political forces have not seen it until now.”

BEIRUT — Syrian government forces seized a village in the central Homs province on Saturday, state media and a monitoring group said, as part of a push for control of areas along the Lebanese border.

The village of Al Zara, west of the city of Homs, fell after “heavy clashes” between government and rebel forces, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, although the number of casualties was not immediately clear.

Zara is inhabited mostly by Sunni Muslims from the ethnic Turkmen minority, it added.

In a statement on state news agency SANA, Syria’s armed forces said they had established complete control over the village and killed and captured a “large number of terrorists”, using state media’s customary term for rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

The victory gave government forces control over a route connecting central Syria to the Mediterranean coast and which had been used as “a primary route for terrorist groups coming from Lebanese territory to neighbouring areas to carry out criminal operations”, it said.

Syria’s civil war has killed over 140,000 people since it started three years ago as a peaceful protest movement against four decades of Assad family rule.

The conflict has become increasingly tangled as rebel groups — including many hardline Islamist factions — have turned on one another, leading to clashes that have killed thousands of people this year alone.

Executions

Separately, a video was published online by activists purportedly showing members of Al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executing eight prisoners.

In the video, fighters in fatigues line up the prisoners inside a building and force them to kneel before shooting them from behind.

Some of the men in the video speak Russian with marked Caucasian accents and speech patterns. Towards the end, one speaker is heard to say “kill them, brothers”.

Many foreign Islamists have joined the fight against Assad, largely from Arab countries but also from Russia’s North Caucasus region as well as Europe, North America and Asia.

It is not clear when the video was taken or where. Syrian state media also broadcast the footage, which it was not possible to verify independently. Activists said the fighters belonged to ISIL, but that was also impossible to verify.

ISIL is a rebranding of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in neighbouring Iraq but Al Qaeda’s central leadership formally announced a split with the group in February after disputes over its refusal to limit itself to fighting in Iraq rather than Syria.

Another hardline Islamist group, the Nusra Front, is Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

BEIRUT — A Sunni Lebanese militant group linked to Al Qaeda has apologised for the civilian casualties of a suicide bombing last month, and said its fight was against Iran and its ally Hizbollah, not Shiites in general.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades took credit for a February 19 attack on Shiite Iran’s cultural centre in Beirut that killed eight people in an area where support for the Shiite political and military movement Hizbollah runs strong.

But in an unusual statement published on Islamist websites and on the group’s Twitter feed, the group said it had intended the explosions to go off in an area where shrapnel would not reach the main street, so as to spare civilian lives.

“The Abdullah Azzam Brigades’ operations do not target Shiites in general, or any other sect, and we always stress to our martydom-seekers to be cautious and abort an operation if they think it could kill others than those targeted,” it said.

It blamed an “unintended defect” for the error.

Lebanon has been increasingly hit by violence linked to the war in its much larger neighbour Syria, which has killed over 140,000 people over the last three years and forced millions to flee their homes, including nearly 1 million into Lebanon.

The conflict has taken on an increasingly sectarian character. Hizbollah has sent fighters to assist President Bashar Assad, a member of the Shiite offshoot Alawite sect, while the rebels are overwhelmingly Sunni and include many hardline Islamists, including some linked to Al Qaeda.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades also claimed a November attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut.

A group describing itself as the Lebanese branch of the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, has also claimed suicide attacks in Shiite areas of Lebanon, including several in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades said in its statement it chose only “legitimate targets” of Iran and Hizbollah, but also accused Hizbollah of using civilians as “human shields”.

“We assure our people, the Sunni people and all Lebanon’s sects: Our war is with the party of Iran, and our targets are its interests and its military, security, and political centres in Lebanon and abroad,” it said, referring to Hizbollah.

EILAT, Israel — A ship allegedly carrying advanced rockets from Iran to Gaza that was intercepted by the Israeli navy was escorted into the Red Sea port of Eilat on Saturday.

Israeli naval commandos seized the vessel on Wednesday in the Red Sea between Eritrea and Sudan, with the military saying it was carrying an Iranian shipment of M-302 rockets destined for the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

The Panamanian-flagged Klos-C was escorted into Eilat port by two Israeli warships.

Thousands of Israelis gathered on a hill overlooking the port broke into applause when the ship came into view.

“We will dismantle all the containers to verify if they contain other weapons,” an army spokesman said, adding that a news conference will be held at the end of operations late on Monday.

Israeli radio said that ambassadors and military attaches posted to Israel as well as “prominent Israeli figures” would be invited to view the weapons seized by the army.

This, the radio said, “will prove to the world that Iran is providing weapons to terrorists active in the Gaza Strip”.

Iran has flatly denied any involvement with the shipment, which the Israeli army said was carrying missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.

At the time of the vessel’s capture on Wednesday, military spokesman Brigadier General Motti Almoz told army radio that dozens of the M-302 long-range missiles were on board.

“From what we understand, it was carrying dozens of M-302 long-range missiles which can reach 150 to 200 kilometres. It may be carrying other weapons as well, but we can only know this when it reaches Eilat.

“There is clear and unequivocal information that this [shipment] came from Iran,” Almoz said, without elaborating.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Israel of lying and noted that the announcement of its capture coincided with a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the AIPAC pro-Israeli lobby in the United States.

“An Iranian ship carrying arms for Gaza. Captured just in time for annual AIPAC anti Iran campaign. Amazing Coincidence! Or same failed lies,” Zarif wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

Netanyahu has been pressing the international community to maintain crippling economic sanctions on Iran over its nuclear drive and used last week’s visit to the US to push his case.

The United States said on Wednesday its intelligence services and military worked with Israel to track the ship.